


The Multitude of Thy Sorceries

by twelve_pastels



Series: if so be thou mayest prevail [1]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: #givedumbledoreahusband2017, Author Does Insufficient Research, Author Has A Mad Thing For American Aurors, Author Has A Mental Affliction, Author’s Episcopalian is Showing, Author’s Yankee is Showing, Baked Goods, Death Shall But Delay, F/M, Jewish Character, M/M, Maine is Full of Selkies, Massachusetts is Full of Ghosts, New England, New Hampshire is Full of Monsters, No-Maj Rights, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Vermont is Full of Werewolves, World War I, World War II, old soldiers never die
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 23:09:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9851003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twelve_pastels/pseuds/twelve_pastels
Summary: Things a Dark Wizard expects from a captured enemy: rage, pleas, doomed escape plans, heroic monologues, psychological breaks, prolonged death.Things a Dark Wizard does not expect: Panther animagi, wandless magic, being bitten repeatedly by said captive in both human and animagus form.Percival George Weland Graves is a lot harder to get rid of than simply stuffing him in a tea jar.





	

_Stand now with thine enchantments, and with the multitude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured from thy youth; if so be thou shalt be able to profit, if so be thou mayest prevail. Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee.. ~ Isaiah 47:12-13, KJV._

*** 

The first week he was imprisoned by Grindelwald, Percival was embarrassed. The guy had gotten the drop on him while he’d been picking up the paper, for Franklin’s sake, with a goddamn seltzer bottle to the head. Hell of a way to start 1926.

After Grindelwald told him exactly what he intended to do, and precisely what he wanted him for, he spent a carefully allotted three days being very badly frightened. Being used for Polyjuice and mimicry spells was one thing - being kept aside for one’s bones was another.

After that, though, he was just plain pissed. And Percival George Weland Graves was a lot harder to get rid of than any Dark Wizard would think.

***  
Mr. Scamander was well on his way back to England, Grindelwald was in secure lockdown, New York was still standing and not screaming about magic. The death of Credence Barebone weighed heavily, but not outside of what an Auror had to bear in the course of work; the ability to compartmentalize, to grieve in measure and on one’s own time, was a necessary skill. 

Tina thus realized, dimly, that something had to be very, very wrong when she found herself leaning against the wall behind her desk, sobbing bitterly and shaking, for no apparent reason at all.

She’d never been one to cry, much, not even when her parents died; her grief had always had other outlets, and there was Queenie, with and for whom there never needed to be extra words. But then there’d been the incident with the Second Salemers, and the demotion to the wand permits office, and now that she thought about it it must have been Grindelwald who sent her there because Mr. Graves was gone, _gone_ , and it was her fault he was dead, all those deaths were her fault, poor Credence, she hadn’t done anything, useless, _worthless_ \- 

Tina couldn’t catch her breath. She heard voices around her, alarmed, loud, but she couldn’t move. Sorrow was pinning her in place, guilt pressing the air from her lungs. Her jacket came off, and the collar of her blouse tore. Something cool and wet touched the back of her neck.

It was like sticking her head in the icebox in the middle of a heatwave, the way whatever had been controlling her lifted, sudden relief. She sucked in a deep breath, then another, eyes sore, bewildered at the tears running down her face. Four of the junior Aurors were clustered around her desk, their faces drawn. Tina coloured when she realized that her blouse had been ripped off completely, leaving her upper body in just a brasserie and camisole. Thank Douglass that Abernathy wasn’t around to see this.

The cool, wet touch continued down her spine, and then on to her left shoulder. Tina turned her head and saw Queenie, her lips tight and bloodless, carefully painting a long chain of runes in blue ink down her arm to the wrist. She looked up, smile trembling, and whispered, “And you said I only took Ancient Runes ‘cause I was sweet on Jamie Northeast.”

Tina didn’t even bother speaking, just took a deep breath and thought apologetic things at her sister as Queenie shuffled around to her right side, continuing the rune chain. It looked like she’d used nearly the entire bottle of ink.

One of the aurors was leaning over her desk, saying “Yeah, I can feel it, there’s something wrong here, nobody touch it.” All four of them lifted their wands, levitated the desk, and slowly turned it, papers spilling onto the floor. It settled gently onto the mound of debris, upside down, with an oddly resonant thump.

Andreas Roullion, his green eyes wide, took one look at the underside of Tina’s desk and spun away, stifling a scream. He leaned against the wall, shaking. Tina couldn’t tear her eyes away; warped runes crawled across the wood, seething, circling the witch-mark in the center. It looked like it had been burned in. It looked like it was still burning. 

It looked like it was looking at her.

Queenie clapped a hand over her sister’s eyes. “Don’t look at it! It’ll know, and what I painted on ain’t gonna last for long.” She turned Tina around and held her hands, eyes wide. “You’re thinkin’ like yourself, now, like you haven’t been for a while. Be a cop. Tell us where Grindelwald hid the Chief.”

Tina took a deep breath and closed her eyes, feeling the ink tingle on her bare skin as the curse writhing across her desk fought to take back control. “Okay, first thing, now that Queenie warded me, I can tell that there’s more of those things, a lot more of them. Roullion, Wilson, Schreinhardt, McVeigh, don’t wander off, stay with me in a group, ‘cause if you don’t you’re gonna forget what’s going on and why you were here.” She breathed out through her nose and opened her eyes, laser focused and visibly angry. “Now. If I, if we, were a Dark wizard using the Auror corps to their own advantage, where would we stash the head Auror we were impersonating? Somewhere close.”

Gwendolyn McVeigh, who had always been quick on the uptake, grabbed Tina’s wrist in her pale, long-fingered hand and started dragging her down the hall towards Graves’ office. Something on the pillar they passed flared an angry shade of orange, and Billy Schreinhardt swore and jerked back, his normally oaken complexion an odd, ashy shade. Roullion bodily dragged him away, saying “we don’t have long, finding Goldstein’s triggered all of ‘em, move, move!”, Queenie skittering along beside them, muttering a concealment cantrip under her breath. Deliverance Wilson, whose regular facial expressions ran the gamut from genteel bewilderment to abject confusion, was bringing up the back of their group, wand out and visage as blank as a fresh slate. 

They made it to the office at a run, the six of them. Queenie was the first in the room, her face going vague the way it did when she was listening as carefully as she could. Roullion and Wilson stood guard at the door, McVeigh scanning the room, and Schreinhardt immediately dropped to his hands and knees to look at the underside of Graves’ desk, talking rapidly to himself in German. Tina turned slowly, scanning the room; she overlaid what she remembered of the office from when she had once been a regular visitor with what she saw now. Everything was on the same shelf, but there was something off, something slightly shifted - 

“There.” Tina pointed, and everyone turned to look. “The tea jar.”

McVeigh squinted. “Really? You sure?”

“Yes. It’s what he keeps the stuff in that he gives to guests he hates but has to pretend to be nice to, he told me so after the thing we had to deal with in Herald Square. He even hates the damn jar, there’s no reason for it to be on the front of the shelf.”

Schreinhardt’s head popped up over the edge of the desk, black hair mussed. “I can see it clearly from the chair, direct line of sight.”

Nobody had to say anything else then, though, because a soft but audible _plink_ came from the inside of the tea jar. All six of them went quiet.

The jar went _plink_ again, louder, and scooted slightly across the shelf, turning so that they could see a spot where the silver plate had worn off and the copper showed underneath. Tina walked over and picked it up, carefully. 

“We don’t have time for the standard protocols. Wilson, Roullion, hold the door as hard as you can; Queenie, out in the hall. I’m opening this now and I don’t know who or what’s going to come out. McVeigh, Schreinhardt, be ready.”

Tina wrenched the lid off of the tea jar. A loud _whumph_ deafened everyone, pungent green smoke filled the room, and when it dissipated a moment later Tina was on her back, very still, with the dagger-clawed paw of a large black panther pressed against her throat. 

Tina’s eyes were very wide; the cat’s ears were slicked back and its teeth bared. Through a dry, reluctant throat, she whispered, “Mr. Graves, sir, it’s me, Tina Goldstein. We have Grindelwald in custody.”

The cat’s shape rippled for a moment, and suddenly it was indeed Mr. Graves over her on one knee, his hand on her throat. He was unshaven and unshod, his shirt torn and smudged, his hair a mess and his eyes feral. His voice, when he spoke, had a slight rasp against its usual smoothness. “Prove it.”

He didn’t even remotely need a wand to be threatening.

Tina took a slow breath. “The Hyde Park case, sir, when you were my training officer. You told me to create a distraction so that you could catch the suspect, without drawing attention from the No-Majs. You put in your report that I’d done so successfully, and had in fact taken him down myself.” She paused and swallowed. “You didn’t put in that I’d done so by throwing an apple at his head.”

Graves’ expression didn’t shift at all, but Tina risked moving her arms, very slowly. She pressed a finger against her left wrist, and a thin band of light flared around it. “We both decided that would be as good a Shibboleth Spell as any.”

The director continued to gaze at her, unblinking, and then a broad smile spread across his face. “Miss Goldstein, your methods are as unorthodox and successful as always.”

Tina beamed back at him. “Oh, sir, it’s so good to see you back, I can’t really breathe, please.”

His hand left her throat, and he took her arm to help her to her feet, ever the gentleman, even in extremis. “Tell me someone’s got my wand.” An arm came around the edge of the door, holding a length of ebony with a steel inset. “Wilson. Good to see the kleptomania is coming in use.”

“Yessir, only when it’s necessary, sir.”

Graves checked the wand carefully, looking for any cracks or marks, and Tina realized that it was very, very slightly different from the one she’d seen the supposed Director carrying since the New Year. Stupid, so stupid, didn’t even deserve to be an investigator - 

She gasped and bent in half, Graves catching her. Queenie burst back in through the door and checked the rune chains. “Oh no, they’re almost drained, how are they draining that fast? Mr. Graves, I need a pot of blue ink and I need it NOW, or we need to get to her desk down in Wand Permits.” 

Graves snarled and grabbed both Tina and Queenie’s wrists, and both of them reached out and linked hands with the other aurors. There was an almighty _CRACK_ , everyone’s head spinning, and Graves was marching forward towards a familiar upended desk, McVeigh incredulously hissing, “Did he just side-along all six of us? Within the building?”

Graves froze a couple of feet away from the desk, staring at the runework where it seethed even stronger than before. The central mark looked brighter, and slightly raised, as though it was trying to detach from the desk. He lowered Tina, who was shaking and visibly short of breath, to the floor, and inched forward to get a better look.

His voice was very quiet when he spoke, the kind you used when something much bigger than you were was sleeping and you needed to sneak past. “Has anyone taken pictures of this?”

Roullion nodded, shakily. “Yes sir.”

Graves nodded. “Good.” In a blur of movement, he whipped his wand at the desk, and the entire thing imploded in a puff of dust. Everyone could hear the shriek as the runes came apart, and an afterimage of the central mark hovered in the air for a moment before a gust of cold air came down the vents and blew it away.

Tina, still panting but now able to draw breath, climbed to her feet, the core mark that her sister had painted on the nape of her neck still strong and blue, but the rest faded to a blur. She bit her lip and spoke quietly. “Uh. Sir. All my reports were in there.” 

Graves turned and met her eyes, holding her gaze. “Is there anything wrong with your memory?”

“No sir, I don’t think so.” She glanced over to Queenie, who also shook her head, fingers twitching. 

“Fine then. We’ll do a _dictatum_ spell when you fill me in. Right now I need a sandwich, a cup of coffee, and for one of you who’s _not_ either of the Misses Goldstein,” his voice suddenly dropped, becoming cold with fury, “to tell me just what in Douglass’ name that Kraut bastard did to my department, and why none of you noticed a change in leadership.”

He paused for a moment, blinked, and then said, slowly, “And while you’re at it, explain to me why there’s apparently been a complete turnover in the ranks of Aurors. Who the hell is supervising all of you?”

Tina looked at her feet. “Mr. Abernathy, sir.”

Graves looked bewildered. “But he’s an idiot. Aren’t any of you senior enough to take that oaf’s place?”

Schreinhardt spoke up first, quietly, his voice steady but looking utterly terrified. “None of us are senior, sir. Everyone with any field experience was put permanently out on the beat nearly two months ago, some of them at as far a distance as the Arizona office. All the rest of us were loaned to other departments or assigned paperwork. I don’t think anybody you could at all call senior has been in your office since early January.”

Graves’ eyes went wide, and his mouth twisted in a way that made Tina think he didn’t know whether to laugh or throw up. He drew in a deep breath, obviously trying to buy time and think of orders.

That, of course, was when a bundle of runes on the wall flared, detached as a Sending with lots of claws and no visible eyes, and leaped at them, and everything got very loud for the next while.

***

Two hours, significant cosmetic building damage, and the ruination of six different wardrobes later, a damp and singed Director Percival G. W. Graves was delivering his first actual report to the President in over two months. He’d much have prefered to have a shave, a bath, a nap, and a change of clothes beforehand, but needs must when the Devil drives.

Also, stalking the halls of MACUSA barefoot, disheveled, and smelling faintly of smoke had done rather a great deal to terrify everyone into getting control of Grindelwald’s booby traps in record time. Percival couldn’t complain.

There was still a great deal that needed to be done - actually disarming all the attack and forgetfulness runes instead of merely enclosing them, figuring out just why Wilson had found Percival’s wand jammed in with a load of rags bound for the incinerator, interrogating Grindelwald before the Europeans took him back and invariably lost him again in six months. More important than that, however, was reading the full reports of what had happened since the start of January, and figuring out just what had gone to hell by mid-March.

Percival was baffled, and quietly very alarmed, that it had been that long. He thought he’d been imprisoned for a few weeks, tops. Granted, he’d spent a great deal of time in his animagus form, partly out of self-defense and partly to avoid going crazy, but the jar must have had a minor stasis spell on it as well.

(He’d never admit that nervous grooming in panther form was a large part of why he didn’t look as ragged as he should have. Theseus had teased him enough about that back in France.)

Inside of the tea jar had been like a cold-water flat; one room, a sink and a toilet, a pallet to sleep on, food regularly. Aside from the time he’d spent flinging himself at both the walls and his captor, Percival might have found it restful. Instead it had been boring and unnerving in equal measure. 

The most alarming part had been how determined Grindelwald had been to talk him around to his side, advocating the removal of Percival’s leg only as a last resort once all other avenues to achieving his goal had been blocked. He’d been so damned reasonable in his mania that if Percival had been an even remotely credulous person at all, he’d have been sucked under by the rhetoric.

Even then, it had been a near thing. 

All of this was weighing on his mind as he paced back and forth across the President’s office, clenching and unclenching his hands. “Tina’s desk and my office weren’t the only spots. Every doorjamb, every bookcase, every column. Runes, witch marks, sigils and glyphs I’ve never even heard of, they’re all over the goddamn building! People couldn’t have noticed I was missing if Grindelwald did the Charleston in long johns in the lobby!”

He flung out a hand in exasperation and something on the other side of the room shattered.

“Damn near my entire staff is gone, either on forced leave or transfers or unexplained disappearances, and the only one of my personally trained Aurors who stayed in the building was stuffed in the basement and nearly driven insane by some of the most complex runic work I’ve seen outside of academic literature.” He stopped and dragged his hands over his face, a lapse in composure that he’d never have indulged in in front of anyone else, and rarely even in front of her. “Two and a half months. Two and a half months and he made this kind of mess. I don’t even know how far it goes yet. It must have taken him forever to set it up, to sneak in; I just hope to God he didn’t ally himself with some remnant of the Scourers, or our lives are about to become a hell of a lot harder in a big hurry.”

Seraphina nodded. “We’re trying to recall as many of the senior Aurors as we can, but it looks like a number of them are on long-range assignments that have put them out of contact with us, and others are simply...unresponsive.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Grindelwald was far better at moving us around than he should have been. I can only hope, for the sake of our pride and my sanity, that the setup for this indeed took him a long time.”

Percival nodded, still pacing. “I have a few things to ask him; I’ll be able to get something out of him, not everything, but enough to go on.” He rolled his head a bit, cracking his neck. “He may have had me trapped in a goddamn tea jar since January, but I made an impression. Several impressions, in fact.”

Seraphina arched a brow. “In any specific manner?”

“I bit the guy repeatedly, with both sets of teeth. It’ll scar.”

Seraphina arched an eyebrow, and waited. Percival looked at her sideways, and a small smirk crooked the corner of his mouth up, that expression that made young Aurors’ hearts beat a little faster. “Exactly where you think I did.”

Seraphina couldn’t keep it in; she threw her head back and laughed, a mix of hilarity and relief. Percival grinned openly, for a moment looking like he had back at school, and then continued.

“Queenie Goldstein’s a damn fine rune-witch, but she’s going to need help to fully unravel all of these. I know someone I can call in - do I have your permission?”

Seraphina tapped her desk. “Give me the information and I’ll summon them myself.” Graves frowned, and she raised a slim, imperious hand. “Don’t, Percy. I know you, and I know it’s you, but we’re already taking a lot of hell from the International Wizarding Federation, and I’m not letting you put your signature to anything before you’re seen to by a mind-healer. If it’s my name in ink on the papers, we can lie through our teeth, but the minute your name is on it they’ll come chasing us.” She folded her hands and arched a brow at him. “Never mind we caught Grindelwald for them, we’re apparently too stupid to be allowed to keep him.”

Percival barked out a humourless laugh and shook his head, hands on his hips. “International condemnation? From the Europeans, the Brits? Hypocrites. They beat house elves, hunt werewolves, and the minute we ask for help with an endemic, built-in Dark Wizarding population being fired up by one of their own that they can’t bother to properly keep under lock and key, we’re the incompetents? Our country’s larger than their damn continent. To hell with all of ‘em.” Percival curled his lip. “They were the ones who lost the bastard in the first place, and if they want him back, we’ll bleed them dry to pay for it.”

“I’ve got a list of concessions I want myself, Percy, but what are you looking for?”

He paused for a moment. “Assurances. Influence. An open channel.”

Seraphina narrowed her eyes and leaned forward. “You know something you’re not saying. What is it.”

It hadn’t been a question.

Percival looked out the window for a minute, perfectly still. When he spoke, his voice was softer, sounded younger. 

“It was supposed to be the war to end all wars, for all of us. It’s not over yet. This is just a cease-fire long enough to breed the next generation of cannon fodder, and I can see it coming. In fact, my sister’s seen it coming. And I’m not looking forward to going through this again.” He shook himself slightly and turned back to her, expression smoothed out. “Theseus Scamander is the man we can bring in to assist Queenie; I knew him during the war, he’s good people, fine eye for a rune.”

Seraphina visibly twitched. “Scamander? We just sent the last one back.”

Percival’s expression lit up with interest. “Oh, did you meet Newton? His brother said he’d been wanting to come to the States, something about a research grant he’d landed.” He couldn’t tell what exactly Seraphina’s face was doing, but Percival immediately felt alarmed. “What is it, was it something about the past three months? Did he get hurt? Theseus’ll have kittens if anything happened to him.”

Seraphina sighed deeply, summoned a large chair in front of her desk, and said, tiredly, “Percy, please sit down.” She turned her head slightly and said, “Vellum?”

The Presidential Office elf appeared soundlessly, as efficient as ever, MACUSA flag draped like a toga over a crisp, blindingly white tea-towel tunic. “Yes, Madame President?”

“Please bring me the latest files on the Obscurial incident, including a full report of Grindelwald’s capture.” Across the desk from her, Percival’s eyes had gone very wide. “Director Graves needs to be informed.”

Vellum looked Percival up and down, critically, and snapped his fingers, the worst of the scorching, dirt, and tears in Percival’s clothes repairing themselves instantly. “Vellum is seeing this. Vellum will also be bringing a luncheon tray and a measure of whiskey for the Director.” He paused. “Perhaps two measures, as the Director is a Graves and therefore likely to take this all badly.” He vanished again.

Percival leaned back in his chair, a hand over his mouth. “What the hell happened to Theseus’ baby brother, and how in the name of Benjamin Franklin did we have another Obscurial?”

The soundproofing on the President’s office was second to none. People still flinched as they walked by that afternoon. Percival Graves, was, indeed, taking all of this very badly.

***

The door to the interrogation room creaked open, and Gellert Grindelwald raised his pale face to meet Percival’s gaze. 

Percival walked over to the steel table and laid a thick file on it. “Well, Herr Grindelwald, you’ve certainly caused a disturbance in my department. Not to mention I think that, thanks to your machinations, all of my houseplants have died.”

Grindelwald’s expression was unmoving, and his voice came in a whisper. “Ah. I see you kept the British tendency for understatement when you left their rule.”

Percival ignored him in favour of the file, which he paged through without comment. Appearing to read a page near the back, he idly observed, “It seems to me that nearly everything you do is some variation on smoke and mirrors. Impersonating me, runework to warp the minds of my Aurors, luring in the Obscurial named Credence Barebone - your entire life is artifice.”

Lifting his eyes to meet the mismatched ones of the prisoner, Percival cocked his head, very slightly. “What’s more, not even that is your real face.”

The prisoner didn’t move at all, but his skin slowly rippled, the horror of an Animagus transformation except between one human form and another. His face and body became more lean, his hair golden and shot through with grey in his beard as well as at his temples. Cool blue eyes looked over the rims of a pair of heavy, dark-rimmed glasses that appeared out of nowhere with the wave of slim fingers. The prisoner’s blacks that Grindelwald had been put in upon his capture suddenly looked like the finest Continental fashion, instead of the badge of misdeed they were supposed to represent.

He shouldn’t have been able to do any of that at all, not with the shielding in this room.

Percival let out a long, slow breath through his nose. Grindelwald smiled, very slightly. “For shame, Mr. Graves. For someone so handsome, you are unduly harsh.”

The blond man cocked his head, a subtle motion, his gaze evaluating. “Even so - as you have been clever enough to capture me, I believe using my own face is the least I can do.” His German accent was smooth and his tone educated, and it only made him more frightening. Percival could feel the muscles in his shoulders bunching, preparing to spring and pounce and rend and kill.

“Why did you use the other form in the first place?”

Grindelwald shrugged, a smooth ripple of movement. “Vanity, I suppose. I am not as young as I used to be, and, well. Back on the Continent, they love to call me a monster, so I supposed it would be amusing to take a form they would feel suited my actions.”

“But you don’t think your actions suited that face.”

Grindelwald arched an imperious, sandy brow. “Of course not. I was playing to a specific audience, but by no means my favoured one.” His tone became slightly more intimate, and his expression less formal. “And while we have the chance to speak, Mr. Graves, I must apologize for imprisoning you for so long. It was hardly my first choice of action, but I only did what I deemed necessary.”

Percival made a long, slow blink at him, and carefully kept his face impassive. “Well, I’d apologize for biting you repeatedly, but I think we both know I’d be lying as I, in fact, took great pleasure in doing so.”

Grindelwald leaned back in his seat and chuckled a little, the corners of his eyes crinkling. It would have been devastatingly attractive if one didn’t know who he was. “I must admit, I was quite impressed - not only with your actual form, but with the control you have over the transformation. Few wizards are clever enough to do that, let alone possess your strength with wandless magic.” He spread his hands, an elegant gesture. “It was why I made the choice to, how do you Americans say, get the drop on you, rather than confront you openly. While the duel would have been no doubt exhilarating, I really did not feel that I had the time to spare.”

Percival didn’t move at all. “Yes, what with the need to turn an abused child into a weapon and use part of my body to control him.”

Grindelwald arched his eyebrows and made a surprised noise. “Come now, Mr. Graves, I would hardly have left you without any leg at all. It’s well within my means to make a new one that works just as well.”

Percival could feel just how unimpressed his expression was. “Forgive me, Herr Grindelwald, if I objected more to the idea of a wand being made from my shinbone than I did to merely losing the leg.”

Grindelwald shrugged. “Needs must as the Devil drives, sir, as I am sure you well know. And a wand made from the bone of a wizard, especially one that is willingly given, would be a great and powerful tool to protect our people.” He leaned forward, cold blue eyes intent. “I truly had hoped you would understand, one such as yourself, just why I do what I do, why I have been called to make the changes in our society that no one else dares.”

Percival could feel his fingertips flexing against the back of his own folded hands, sense-memory of unsheathing claws. “I quite think our society is going along well enough as it is. Change will come for us all, Herr Grindelwald, in its own time, and I’m not one to hurry it along when it can happen naturally.”

Grindelwald sighed with his entire body as though Percival had brutally disappointed him, as though he himself was the one running the investigation. “And that, much to my consternation, is why I fear you and I shall never be allies, much against my desires.” Percival felt his skin crawl. Grindelwald clapped his hands, and a lifetime of training (plus shelling in France) kept Percival from jumping out of his skin. “Now! To the meat of it. I am certain that you came here to get the locations of my boltholes in New York, yes?” 

Percival didn’t respond. It felt safer.

Grindelwald smiled winningly and folded his hands on the table. “I would of course be happy to provide them, as they are no longer any use to me and you and yours may find them interesting. But, of course, making a list of such things is beneath one such as you - send me one of your more trustworthy underlings sometime today and I shall tell them all they wish to know.”

Percival let himself smile, finally, although it was more of a baring of fangs. “I assure you, Herr Grindelwald, that I am perfectly capable of running my own department and collecting what needs to be known.”

Blue eyes widened, the other man’s expression mildly hurt. “Goodness, I never said you weren’t. You’re certainly more competent than your British counterparts; you’ve had me for nearly a week and I’ve actively tried to escape.” Grindelwald grimaced and shifted in his seat slightly, in a way that Percival found deeply pleasing. “Perhaps in part because certain puncture wounds are healing more slowly than expected.”

Percival felt a thrill of something that would have been victory if it weren’t so vindictive. “While I will accept the compliment, it was hardly what I meant. I already have the list you were so willing to give me.” He leaned back in his chair, very slowly. “I had it taken down before I even came in.”

Grindelwald’s eyes went wide in genuine surprise. “But only...well. A natural Legilimens on your staff, and I don’t even know whom it might be.” He bowed incrementally in his seat. “Sir. My compliments on your move.”

Percival rose from his chair, collecting the file. “Thank you. And Franklin willing, they’ll be the last ones you ever pass me.”

As he left the room he could feel that cold blue gaze still fixed on his back. 

*** 

Percival closed the door to the interrogation chamber, and made it all the way down the hallway and three floors beyond it before he had to lean against a wall. 

Light footsteps came around the corner, and he turned his head to see Tina Goldstein looking at him with a worried expression. “Sir? Did the interrogation go...how did it go? For you?”

Percival put a hand over his eyes; he could feel himself shaking. “It went exactly the way I expected it to go. Offering me the information was secondary to trying to talk me over to his side, again.”

He couldn’t see Tina’s expression, but her voice was dubious. “Well, sir, that seems...oddly naive of him. I mean, he spent nearly three months fighting an angry panther, he can’t expect it to turn into a housecat after that.”

Percival turned and gaped at her in a manner that would have left his middle sister rolling her eyes. If he’d had any fondness for women, he’d have said to hell with MACUSA regulations and married Tina within a year of her starting in his department. As it was, he was working on how to tell Mother he’d managed to adopt another two girls into the family on top of the three she’d already borne after him. 

Tina blinked at him, ignorant to his thought processes, and then brightened. “I do have some good news, sir - Grindelwald never got into your apartment, he wasn’t able to breach the wards.”

Percival snorted, but smiled. “Thank goodness. I don’t think I’d be able to take another night on the sofa in my office. Four seems to be my limit.” He peeled himself off the wall and started walking with her to the ground-level apparition point. Tina wouldn’t have passed on the news about his flat if Picquery wasn’t subtly nudging him to go home.

“Didn’t they offer you a bed in the medical ward, sir?” Tina trotted to keep up with him, pausing to dump a pile of papers on someone’s desk with a muttered comment.

“Yes, but not even Franklin, Douglass, and Roosevelt together could have kept me in there any longer than absolutely necessary. It’s full of the ill and the injured.”

Tina sighed, her voice tinged with fondness and frustration. “That’s sort of the point of a medical ward, sir.”

Percival, rounding the corner to the apparition point, chose to ignore that comment. “It’s not overly curious that my apartment wards are intact. Likely Grindelwald thought it wasn’t the best use of his time to try and break them, what with everything else he had up his sleeve. We’ll have to follow up on the addresses of the boltholes he gave us, see if he left anything behind. Did any of you manage to break down the door and check on my place?” 

A guilty silence emanated from behind him, and he turned his head to look at Tina. “Let me guess, nobody else could get through the wards on my apartment either.”

“Uh. Nosir. And I set Roullion on them, he can worm his way through anything.”

Percival nodded. “Very efficient, Miss Goldstein. You’ve been making excellent use of their skills, and they obviously trust you.” She coloured slightly, which confused him; he hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true. Prevarication was a sin and a waste of time. “In truth, I’m not surprised. The wards on my place are particularly tricky. Now, though, I’ll know who let Wilson into my office when all my teacups all go missing.” 

She giggled, and he shook his head, deadpan. “No, you’re right, that’s not fair, he’s more likely to go for the pen nibs. That man has a terrible fondness for china, but he goes through pens so quickly that I wonder if he eats them in his sleep.”

Her laughter rang in his ears even as they apparated away from MACUSA headquarters and came to his door. Percival could clearly see scorch marks on the wall, and whisper-thin cracks in the plaster, where someone had tried very very hard to get inside. Tina stood well back, wary, as he reached forward and carefully put his hand on the mercury glass doorknob.

The silver in the glass swirled, suddenly, becoming liquid and bright, and Percival smiled openly to feel the brush against his mind. The door unlocked with a click, and slid open slightly, and Tina gasped behind him. “I felt that, I could feel that! What - but how - there was music, and a man laughing, what was that?”

Percival stepped through the door, handing his coat off to the translucent, robed household Sending that faded out of the wall near the closet in a swirl of runes and charm-work as soon as he crossed the threshold. “A ward-spell developed by a several times great-aunt of mine. It uses a certain degree of Legilimency to operate, and is keyed either to an individual or a family, with memories they can all recognize.” He helped her out of her coat, handing it and her hat to the same Sending, which Tina regarded with wide, interested eyes. “Much like your family, a certain degree of Legilimency runs in mine, although not as strongly as what Miss Queenie can do.”

Tina looked at him warily out of the corner of her eye. “I thought you probably knew about that. You’ve never got on either of us about registering her talent, though.”

Percival stopped prowling around his parlour, checking to make sure everything was as he remembered leaving it, and arched his brows in surprise. “Of course not. That’s for people who have gone and learned it, mostly because they’re likely to go too far and end up going some degree of insane. As I said, it runs in my family too, although not as much, so I know what it is to live around someone who comes by it naturally and has a good handle on it. It would be like registering her for the way she breathes.”

Tina regarded him with a gaze as cool and assessing as any his family could have produced while they both moved through his apartment, checking each room and then coming back to the sitting area. She paused in the middle of the room, and then said abruptly “I see why Grindelwald got rid of any of us who knew you at all. Even with the miles of runes in the building, he wasn’t a thing like you. The -” she paused, searching for the word - “the reserve you display was, in him, merely coldness. He mistook solemnity for an uncaring nature.” 

Percival looked away, slightly, trying to be casual. “So am I to take it that you don’t see him, and what he did to you, when you look at me?”

Tina’s expression of profound disgust was so extreme that he couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m sorry, I’ve obviously offended you by asking. You’re right, it was foolish.” He could feel his face fall, and sighed. “But it is a serious concern of mine. There’s about five of you, not counting the President, who can meet my eyes without flinching. And while ordinarily I’d be entertained, these days it’s giving me a complex.”

“People do find you very aloof and intimidating, sir.”

He waved a hand impatiently. “That’s because I don’t like them. I don’t waste my time talking to people I can’t stand, at least not more than I have to. It helps to keep them away from me.” He fretfully twitched the placement of a blanket on the sofa.

Tina bit her lip in amusement. “That, sir, explains a great deal.”

Percival shot her a sidelong look as he flicked his wand at the logs stacked in the grate, blue-green flames leaping up from the pile of driftwood and lighting up the browns and teals in the Oriental carpet on the parlour floor. “None of that from you, Goldstein. Besides, I’ve heard some very interesting things about you and a sudden fascination with magizoology.” Tina blushed, furiously, and Percival grinned widely, leaning against the mantle. “Or in truth, a certain scholar and expert on the subject. His brother’s latest letter mentioned that Newton’s been even more distracted than usual lately, and has been making the lives of every magical bookbinder in Britain utterly miserable. Can’t imagine what he’d want with a custom copy of his first volume, can you?”

Tina put her face in her hands. “Due respect, sir, but if you say anything more here I will be forced to get Queenie to help me tie a big pink bow around your neck the next time you’re in Animagus form. And share the pictures. Sir.” 

“Your creative vengeful streak is one of your best attributes, Miss Goldstein.”

She sighed in exasperation and planted her hands on her hips, still blushing, still smiling, and looking uncannily like his middle sister. “Do you need any further help here? Will you be alright staying in the apartment alone tonight?”

“I should be. None of the wards were breached, and the Sendings all seem to be in place, if a little fainter than I’d like. I’ll have to refresh the charms tomorrow.”

She shook her head, her smile fading. “That’s not what I meant. Will you be alright staying alone, tonight? Percival?”

It was the first time he could ever remember her calling him by his first name - Tina was, for all her enthusiasm, unfailingly formal at the office - and it warmed him as much as the fire had. He could feel the teasing grin on his face easing into something warmer, an expression that was exclusively reserved for his mother, sisters, and the few people his family had absorbed out of mutual self-interest. “I promise, Porpentina, I’ll be fine. I’m just tired, but I know I’m safe here.”

Surprise coloured her features, and the flush from his teasing earlier settled into a light pinkness across the top of her cheeks. “I - oh. Oh. As long as you’re sure.” She seemed to collect herself, and lifted her chin. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then. And - and if you want to, send a message to me and Queenie tomorrow morning. Just so we know you're alright. If you'd like."

Percival nodded, his voice coming out gentle. "Thank you, Tina. I will. I don't want the two of you to worry."

Tina nodded, taking a slow breath through her nose, and then smiled at him, letting her arm brush against his as they walked to his door. The Sending in the foyer helped her into her coat and hat, smoothing her clothes efficiently and twitching her collar up slightly the way that his sisters all preferred. Tina reached out and squeezed his hand once, tightly, before stepping out the door with her usual quick stride.

The warmth of her hand lingered as Percival roamed around his apartment, quietly activating each ward for the night and snuffing the lights until only the dying fire cast illumination into the apartment. The rich colours, deep greens and blues and browns, seemed to draw in the remnants of the light and hold it as warmth in direct contrast to the sterile prison he'd been trapped in since January. Flicking his wand at the hearth to bank the coals, Percival made his way down the hall to his bedroom. Everything was as he'd left it; old oak bed with a thick duvet to ward off the rawness of a New York winter, chair pushed back slightly from his desk, deep teal velvet drapes matching the cushion of the window seat. The oil painting of a wintertime beach scene in Massachusetts hung over the bed, blue-grey waves crashing on the shore and dunegrass rustling quietly in the wind.

Percival shed his clothes, the cobbled-together pieces of a suit that he'd kept at the office for emergencies in the time before his kidnapping, but didn't bother to change into nightclothes or turn down the bed. Instead, a large black panther hopped elegantly onto the thick white coverlet and made itself a nest in the middle of the bed, burrowing deep into the duvet but with its face to the uncovered window where the lights of the city shone in. Percival shifted a little, settling in, the tip of his tail twitching as he let himself doze off.

Outside the warmth and safety of the apartment, past the open windows and quietly glowing wards, people trotted quickly through the raw March air. It had been unusually cold that week, with a clammy nature to the air that only intensified the temperature. If those hardy citizens hadn't been moving so quickly, one of them might have noticed the scraps of material blowing around in the alley next to Percival Graves' building. Shreds of fabric, they looked like, blacker than black and swirling in patterns that made no sense to the mortal eye.

If those passersby had been truly keen observers, they might have also noticed that though these scraps swirled and spun and gathered with a fury, there was no breeze at all to help them move.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is mostly complete, and will be updated pending my beta's exciting schedule of indoctrinating the youth of the nation. Intensely obsessive and scattered bibliography will also be updated as chapters are posted. 
> 
>  
> 
> **Bibliography:**
> 
> Cotterell, Arthur, and Rachel Storm. The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology. United Kingdom : Hermes House, 2010.
> 
> The Holy Bible, King James Version. Large Print Compact Edition. Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2008.
> 
> Krebs, Christopher B. A Most Dangerous Book. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.
> 
> Nix, Garth. Sabriel. New York : HarperTrophy, 1996. 
> 
> White, Anne Terry. The Golden Treasury of Myths and Legends. Illus. by Alice and Martin Provensen. De Luxe Edition. New York: Golden Press, 1959.


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